The Guardian view on Northern Ireland’s new crisis: stick with the peace process
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Version 0 of 1. For the last eight years Northern Ireland has enjoyed the benefits of its longest period of devolved self-government since Edward Heath imposed direct rule in the 1970s. Yet the power-sharing institutions that were set up after the Good Friday agreement are suddenly looking fragile again. A republican murder in Belfast this month and the weekend decision by the Ulster Unionist party to withdraw from the Northern Ireland government mean that suspension by the British government of devolved rule may be only a few days away. The seriousness of such a development should not be underestimated. Northern Ireland’s political parties have learned by hard experience that intransigence rather than mutual trust often brings votes. Votes matter a lot right now, because assembly elections are due in 2016. Yet everything possible must be done to prevent the collapse of a devolved system that, for all its limitations, has helped bring genuine security and has restored growth to Northern Ireland after long decades of conflict which revealed the bankruptcy of both unionist hegemony and republican violence. The immediate cause of the crisis is the well-trailed decision by the UUP’s ruling executive on Saturday to pull out of the government, in which it has one minister in Ulster’s five-party devolved administration. The UUP has done this for two main reasons. First, because it feels threatened, not unreasonably in some respects, by the recent resumption of IRA activity a decade after the abandonment of the armed campaign in 2005. And, second, because the UUP, which has been eclipsed for more than a decade among unionist voters by the more hardline Democratic Unionists, thinks it can use a recent republican murder in Belfast to embarrass its DUP rivals. Forced to respond to the UUP’s challenge with measures of its own, the DUP is now proposing to exclude Sinn Féin from the Northern Ireland government, a move which could trigger collapse. It would be shortsighted and reckless if internal unionist rivalries brought power-sharing down, even for a limited period. Both parties should look again for fresh ways of cementing cross-community trust with nationalists rather than playing to the gallery. But it cannot be pretended that recent republican violence has not handed another excuse to unionist sceptics of power-sharing. The killing of Kevin McGuigan on 12 August was an internal republican vendetta for the shooting of a former IRA commander in May. But the killing, which police have placed at the door of the Provisional IRA, has highlighted the likelihood that the Provisionals never fully disbanded when they announced the end of their armed campaign in 2005. Both the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Garda in the Irish Republic have confirmed that they do not think the PIRA has ceased to exist. That conclusion fits with Gerry Kelly’s remark last week on behalf of Sinn Féin that “the IRA has left the stage”. But not, it has been pointed out, the theatre. The McGuigan case has not just put unionist parties on the spot. It also poses major questions for republicans. The killing may have removed a lethal threat. But it has inevitably put peaceful power-sharing under threat too, and has challenged the credibility of Sinn Féin leaders. This may threaten their party’s chances in the republic’s general election, likely in the spring, which could coincide with the centenary of the 1916 rising. Sinn Féin has been on 21% in recent polls, in theory within range of a place in government in the south too. Related: Former Northern Ireland first minister suggests plan to rescue power-sharing Although the stakes for individual parties are high, they are not what matters most. That accolade belongs to the positive bipartisanship that still represents Northern Ireland’s best guarantee of a peaceful and prosperous future. This month’s events have been a reminder that the peace process cannot be taken for granted. It remains very contingent, vulnerable to a preoccupation with the past and to isolated events. Even the election of a republican sympathiser as leader of the Labour party might reshape things if he looks like winning a UK election. A material way of moving forward is David Trimble’s idea of reviving the independent monitoring commission, which kept paramilitary activity under review until 2011, helping to build trust. This should be done as a priority. But the SDLP’s Alex Attwood was also right on Sunday to say “some progress on some issues” is not good enough. What Northern Ireland needs more than anything is more resilient solidarity and a commitment to what only the peace process can offer. |